Keeping a child out of court can be one of the best choices a justice system makes.
Diversion can limit the damage of deeper system involvement, connect families with services and hold young people accountable without turning a mistake into a lasting identity.
But the word “diversion” covers more than one process, and the steps in those processes are unclear. Too frequently, options slip away unnoticed.
Hanna Kotyk sums up the problem in her recent Youth Today column, “Juvenile justice reform should start with decisions young people can understand”:
“Different policies should not require young people to decipher hidden decision structures.”
That sentence captures the problem I found in Indiana through my research as a high school student.
I first became interested because I wanted to understand law beyond school. At a Law Day event organized through my school, I met a Purdue Fort Wayne political science professor, who connected me with the university’s pre-law chair. I pursued research with faculty at Purdue Fort Wayne and Wabash College, then interned to deepen my legal experience. During my criminal-defense internship, I accompanied an attorney to court and jails and met clients whose legal problems were sometimes intertwined with mental illness. Those visits made the consequences of legal decisions concrete:
A rule that looks technical on paper can determine whether a young person receives help, faces a demanding condition or becomes more deeply involved in the system.
I began studying how young people move through the juvenile justice system and how early decisions can shape everything that follows. The more I learned, the more I understood that diversion is not simply a way to avoid court. It can determine what services a young person receives, what conditions a family must meet and whether a mistake becomes a lasting part of that young person’s life.
A court-approved informal adjustment (diversion) is not an invisible administrative arrangement. In Indiana, it is a formal program submitted for court approval. Indiana’s probation standards already require conditions to be developed collaboratively with the young person and family, written in simple and developmentally appropriate language, kept as brief as possible, and generally completed within six months. The standards also call for consistent use of the Indiana Youth Assessment System. Those are meaningful protections. But there is evidence that practices vary from county to county.
At one point in my research, I had two Indiana documents open beside each other. One was the statute governing informal adjustment, a court-approved process with defined legal rules. The other was Indiana’s directory of county diversion programs, which includes programs run by probation departments, prosecutors, community organizations and other local partners. Some focus on truancy. Others address substance use, mental health, school-based offenses or first-time misdemeanors. They all fit under the broad idea of diversion, but they do not necessarily work the same way.
After reading Kotyk’s full 10-state review, I kept returning to its central question:
Do young people understand what happens at the next decision point — who makes the decision, what criteria apply, what the consequences are and whether the decision can be reviewed?
Indiana was not included in her review, but its experience shows why the question matters nationally. In Indiana, a young person and family may not know whether they are being offered court-approved informal adjustment, a prosecutor’s program, a probation program or a community-based alternative. They may not know if participation is voluntary, what they are agreeing to, what happens if they miss a condition or what successful completion changes about their case and record.
Courtesy of Malek Kamal
Malek Kamal
Those questions are not technical details. They determine whether a young person can make an informed decision. A process can be informal without being invisible. It can be flexible without leaving families to decipher the rules on their own.
Kotyk also writes that federalism means the 50 states will continue to make different policy choices, and that this is not the problem. The same is true within a state like Indiana. Counties should be able to design services around their own resources. A rural county may not have the same providers as a large city. One community may have a strong restorative-justice program; another may rely on behavioral-health treatment, mentoring or school-based services. That flexibility can remain.
The basic information and protections offered to young people should not depend on their ZIP code.
Kotyk’s recommendations align with mine. Every state should require a short, plain-language explanation whenever a young person is offered diversion. That explanation should identify the legal pathway, decision-maker, eligibility criteria, conditions, length of the program, consequences of noncompletion and result of successful completion. It should also tell the young person and family whether they may consult an attorney and how to ask that a disputed decision or condition be reviewed. States should collect enough information to see how often diversion is offered, denied, completed or terminated, and whether outcomes differ across counties or demographic groups, while protecting young people’s privacy.
After publication, I plan to contact Kotyk and compare her findings with what I found in Indiana. My first priority is to bring these findings to the Fort Wayne mayor through the Mayor’s Youth Engagement Council, where I can present recommendations and connect local concerns to broader policy discussions. I will bring them to Indiana policymakers and youth-justice stakeholders, including the state oversight process examining diversion. Through the Alliance for American Leadership, I will carry these questions into legislative conversations. I also want young people and families who have been offered diversion, denied it or completed it to inform policy through youth advisory input, listening sessions and conversations with youth-serving organizations.
Diversion should help a young person move forward without formal court involvement.
If a young person cannot tell what pathway they are entering, what is required of them or what happens if the decision goes wrong, then diversion has become another form of justice carried out in the shadows.
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Kamal is a senior at Homestead High School in Fort Wayne and a student researcher examining Indiana juvenile justice under university faculty mentorship. He has also served as a legal intern, filed an amicus curiae brief with the Indiana Supreme Court and researched commentary considered by the United States Sentencing Commission.
